Researchers conducting a 5-year-long study examining snow cover in a northern hardwood forest region found that projected changes in climate could lead to a 95 percent reduction of deep-insulating snowpack in forest areas across the northeastern United States by the end of the 21st century. The loss of snowpack would likely result in a steep reduction of forests’ ability to store climate-changing carbon dioxide and filter pollutants from the air and water.

HIV has become completely manageable, but it is surprising how many people still believe some of the misconceptions about the condition. 

The theme of 2018 is “Know your status”, which emphasises the importance of getting tested.

Here are a couple of misconceptions that need to be cleared up. Some are harsh and ignorant untruths while others are just absolute myths.

1. Only ‘high-risk people such as homosexuals and promiscuous people’ should be tested for HIV.

First, what defines “high risk”? Being with one long-term partner does not mean that you will never contract HIV.

“HIV can happen to anyone. It’s not a disease of the promiscuous. Think about survivors of rape or someone born with HIV,” says Barbara Kingsley, an HIV activist who was diagnosed in 2000.

And regardless of that, no-one should be shamed for their sexual choices and lifestyle.

It’s important to know your status as symptoms may not manifest for years and people can be completely unaware that they have HIV. The earlier you know your status, the earlier you can start taking antiretrovirals (ARVs) to combat the virus and take control of your status. You will also need to know your status to reduce the risk of infecting other possible sexual partners.

Regular testing will also help you raise awareness and break the stigma surrounding HIV/Aids by improving the negative attitudes and perceptions in your own family and circle of friends, even if you are with a long-term partner or not having sex at all.

2. You will get very sick and die if you are HIV positive.

Yes, HIV can lead to Aids. Yes, Aids can be fatal. Does this mean that you are immediately doomed as soon as you are tested positive? Certainly not. Nowadays, HIV is well controlled through ARVs, and many HIV positive people live completely healthy, happy lives.

It may take years for the immune system to deteriorate to such an extent that someone living with HIV becomes ill and is diagnosed with Aids.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), HIV will progress to Aids if not treated with ARVs. This will usually happen after about 10 to 15 years, and before it happens, people with HIV may look and feel perfectly well and can continue life to the fullest.

HIV is no longer a death sentence and the sooner you are tested, the sooner you can start the proper treatment.

3. ‘I will never contract HIV/Aids. It’s a disease that only poor people get.’

This statement is so harsh that you cannot imagine anyone saying it out loud. The truth is, HIV is blind to colour or economic status.

According to a paper published in the journal AIDS, stigma surrounding HIV/Aids is a big factor in the limitation of proper treatment.

You as an individual might feel helpless in the face of the quest to find a cure for HIV, or to ensure that everyone has access to medicine and medical care. But what you can do is to start changing the views and perceptions of people in your immediate circle, which can have a wider effect on society.

4. ‘He/she is very skinny. They must have HIV/Aids.’

Progressive Aids in its end stages can cause weight loss and an impaired immune system. Untreated HIV can lead to Aids. However, there is no way of telling someone’s status by simply looking at them.

Physical signs and symptoms can take years to manifest or may never do so, especially when an HIV positive person is taking ARVs and has a healthy, active lifestyle.

5. It’s impossible to marry/have a sexual relationship if you are HIV positive.

Unprotected sex is the most common way of spreading HIV. But with protection, there is no reason why an HIV positive person can’t have a fulfilling relationship with an HIV negative person.

With proper treatment and management through ARVs, there is a chance that the viral load (the presence of HIV in your blood) may be undetectable. Research has shown that having an undetectable viral load can lead to little to no risk of spreading the virus to other people.

However, Barbara Kingsley says that it remains important always to use protection, no matter what your viral load:

“The goal of ARVs is for the virus to eventually become undetectable. This means that if you have an undetectable viral load for a period of six months or longer you cannot pass the virus on to others. It is very important to understand that this doesn’t protect you against pregnancy or any other STD, and that you can still practise irresponsible sex — you should ideally be in a monogamous, long-term relationship. An undetectable state can ONLY be achieved with ARVs, something that has been scientifically proven and internationally accepted. (It, however, doesn’t mean that you can have unprotected sex as you wish.)”

Health24 previously told the story of Quinton Jonck, a South African living with HIV. He said the following: 

“My wife is wonderful – I tried to break it off with her early on in our relationship because I believed we had no future. She wanted to hear nothing about that and two years later we got married. 

“Five years after we got married we had our first child. He was conceived using a procedure called sperm washing and insemination. When we had the next two children, I was on medication to take my viral load down to zero and we took a chance just at the right time. Now we have three children – two boys and a girl [all HIV negative].  

“We are very happy and my wife is still HIV negative after almost 14 years of marriage. Although we only found out about my status after we met, we have always used condoms.

Get tested

It’s important to know your status. You can get tested at any of the following institutions, in both the public and private sectors:

• Hospitals
• Clinics
• Pharmacies who offer clinic services
• Community health centres
• Family planning clinics
• STD clinics
• Pathological laboratories

Make sure that these institutions offer HIV/Aids counselling to help you process the result and to answer any further questions.

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Marelize Wilke

Don’t be surprised at holiday parties if you can remember someone’s name but not their face.

Despite what many believe, people are better at remembering names than faces, researchers found.

In a series of tests, volunteers were able to recall up to 83% of names but only 64% of faces.

A different picture

“Our study suggests that, while many people may be bad at remembering names, they are likely to be even worse at remembering faces,” said Rob Jenkins, a reader in the Department of Psychology at the University of York, in Great Britain.

“Our life experiences with names and faces have misled us about how our minds work, but if we eliminate the double standards we are placing on memory, we start to see a different picture,” he added in a university news release.

Remembering a person’s face relies on recognition, while their name is a matter of recall. People are much better at the former than the latter, according to the researchers.

An everyday phenomenon

They noted that people only realize they’ve forgotten someone’s name when they’ve already recognized the face.

“Knowing someone’s face, but not remembering their name is an everyday phenomenon,” Jenkins said.

“Our knee-jerk reaction to it is to say that names must be harder to memorize than faces, but researchers have never been able to come up with a convincing explanation as to why that might be. This study suggests a resolution to that problem by showing that it is actually a red herring in the first place.”

The study was published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

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As the globe marks World Aids Day on December 1, the call has again gone out for people to join the fight against HIV and Aids, with the event being used as an opportunity to educate people and to remember those who have passed away.

As the first ever global health day, World Aids Day was held for the first time in 1988. Since then it has become an important annual reminder that HIV has not gone away and that there is still a vital need to increase awareness, fight prejudice and improve education.

Disclosure key to long life

This year’s theme for the 30^th anniversary of World Aids Day is, “Know your status”. Communities are encouraged to care for their health by getting tested, practising safe sex and taking treatment.

Nomsa Tyali, 40, who has been living with HIV since 2001, has appealed to South Africans with the virus to speak out about their infection. “People die because of the lack of information. Disclosure is key to a long life,” she said.

She explained that it was important for people to disclose their status and be open about it because it was helpful to others in many ways.

People living with HIV gain strength from knowing that there are others also living with the virus, that they are not alone and that there are many others living with the same condition.

Words of support

Disclosure also offered hope as people can see clearly that the disease does not discriminate and affects rich and poor, young and old, saints and heathens.

“Disclosure also gives people reassurance because they know where to find help or find acceptance in times of isolation,” Tyali said.

Offering words of support, Tyali said “You can be positive, but that doesn’t make you different from others. You are a human, so you need to be accepted and loved. You are HIV positive. Not mad, not sick.”

She warned people to be brave and get tested for HIV.

“Don’t just sit back and be clueless about your health status. Go and test your blood so that you’ll stay aware of your health condition and get some assistance if you need it. Remember, the more you delay, the more the virus is taking charge of your body. Wise up, love your life, take care of HIV before it takes care of you.

“And never treat others with HIV badly. Understand that it just happened like any other disease. Never laugh at them and never judge. Be supportive,” Tyali urged. – Health-e News.

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Asavela Dalana

According to UNAIDS, 36.9 million people around the world are living with HIV. South Africa currently has the largest HIV epidemic in the world, with 7.2 million of its citizens affected by the virus.

Southern and Eastern Africa is home to 50% of the world’s HIV positive population. It’s no wonder the question of whether or not HIV testing should be compulsory keeps popping up.

Earlier this year two Ugandan ministers were backing the call for compulsory HIV testing. The ministers in question were Sarah Achieng Opendi, the State Minister of Health, and Janat Mukwaya, the Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Justice.

According to an article in The Guardian, Mukwaya believed that compulsory HIV testing would allow the stigma surrounding the epidemic to diminish and that through the Ugandan government’s test and treat initiative those affected would receive the help that they need.

In August, Zambian President Edgar Lungu announced that HIV testing was now compulsory in his country. According to News24 Lungu said, “I must admit that there were some colleagues who felt that this policy would infringe on human rights but there [is] no one [who] has the right to take away somebody’s life. Just the same way we don’t consult you for consent when we are testing for malaria, we will go ahead and test you for HIV and we will counsel you and if you are positive; we will commence you on treatment.”

Both announcements by these countries were met with stark opposition and the comments and decisions made were quickly retracted. However, the question about whether or not HIV testing should be compulsory still lingers.

Public debate

Researchers investigating the pros and cons of compulsory HIV testing for pregnant women found that women, children and society as a whole would benefit from mandatory testing.

However, they felt that it should not be something used by governments simply for the sake of testing but as a means to stop the spread of infection and to treat those infected.

A debate between Médicins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) and the University of Cape Town’s Students’ Health and Welfare Centres Organisation (SHAWCO) highlighted the different viewpoints of those in favour and those against compulsory HIV testing.

According to Dr Gilles van Cutsem from MSF, mandatory testing could slow down the rate of new infections and help those who were unaware of their HIV status.

Professor Leslie London, director of the School of Public Health at UCT argued that compulsory testing was an abuse of human rights and that there were other methods available to encourage people to get tested.

In an interview Health-e news, labour lawyer Marlene Potgieter notes that “HIV/Aids is mired in folklore, suspicion and mistrust and the fact that it is a disease that comes from having sex (mostly). It is something that is not spoken about openly… People simply disappear quietly from the workplace and die in silence.”

Confidential HIV testing is considered as a human right. The UN’s International Covenant on Political and Social Rights states that one’s human rights may be limited if it’s a matter of public interest. This limitation may only be initiated if it serves an objective purpose and there are no other alternatives to solving the problem. 

Know your status

Because we live in a country with such high HIV rates, South Africans are regularly encouraged to get themselves tested. Knowing your status can save the lives of those around you, from your partner to your unborn child. Various clinics and health centres around the country offer free, confidential HIV testing. Last year BIOSURE, the HIV self-test, was legally approved, making it that much easier for people to get tested in private. 

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Lauren Mitchell

No respectable Thanksgiving plate is without some form of cranberry, but the fruit’s popularity seems to plummet the other 364 days of the year.

That’s a shame, nutrition experts say, because cranberries deliver a bundle of health benefits. And they’re quite efficient: A cup of raw cranberries has just 50 calories.

Bias toward sweetness

So why aren’t they more of an everyday food? It may come down to taste.

“They’re a little bit more bitter than blueberries or other berries that have those phytochemicals and a little bit crunchier,” said Maya Vadiveloo, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Rhode Island.

“I think you can start to get used to almost any flavour over time, but I think we may have this bias that all fruit needs to be sweet,” she said. “It might just be that people have not really thought that much about cranberries, unless it’s around Thanksgiving.”

Among the health benefits associated with cranberries:

• The vitamins and minerals they contain boost the body’s digestive health and antioxidant system and promote good heart health even possibly improving blood pressure and cholesterol.
• They are high in fibre. But contrary to common perception, the most recent research has not definitively shown that cranberry products help prevent or treat urinary tract infections.
• In laboratory studies, they’ve been linked to a lower risk of certain types of cancer.
• They contain chemicals that may combat norovirus and other food-borne illnesses.

“Cranberries may be a little underutilized,” Vadiveloo said. “They’re not nearly as expensive as many other berries, and at Thanksgiving, the greater variety of fruits and vegetables that you have around things like stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy if you’re balancing your plate with a little bit of everything, you tend to eat less of all the things and still feel very satisfied.”

Closer to candy than fruit

One popular way to work cranberries into a daily diet all year long is by adding dried cranberries to a salad. And while cranberries may taste better when they’re dried than when they’re raw, that sweetness comes at a high cost.

Nutritionally speaking, dried cranberries may be closer to candy than they are to fruit. A 1/3-cup serving of dried cranberries has 123 calories. Worse, most of the nutrients found in raw cranberries are nowhere to be found in the dried version.

One cup of chopped raw cranberries, for example, contains 14.6 mg of vitamin C per serving, while one cup of dried cranberries contains 0.3 mg.

“If you start to think that one of the snack-size Halloween candies is 60 to 110 calories, you could have two cups of raw cranberries for that amount and feel fuller, and have a lot of the beneficial effects,” Vadiveloo said.

Similarly, sweetened cranberry sauce, a Thanksgiving staple, contains 418 calories with just 5.5 mg of vitamin C per one-cup serving.

Interaction with medications

“For almost any food, the preparation matters,” Vadiveloo said. “Most foods can be healthy, especially in their raw form. But when we start doing things to them, we need to be more concerned about the health effects. If you’re trying to start eating more cranberries, even if you’re planning to add sweetener, doing it yourself versus buying something that’s already pre-processed is better.

“People tend to add far less of their own sweetener than what’s in commercially prepared food.”

Another popular way people may try to add cranberries to the diet is by drinking them. Cranberry juice is often combined with other fruit juices, such as grape or apple, for a better flavour.

As with any juice, it’s important to consider the amount of sweetener that’s added. Unsweetened cranberry juice contains 116 calories and 23.5 mg of vitamin C per one-cup serving. Also, it’s worth noting that cranberry juice may interact with certain medications.

And of course, cranberries are popular in muffins. But depending on how they are made, muffins aren’t necessarily a nutritionist’s favourite choice, Vadiveloo said: “We don’t want to see a muffin claim health benefits just because it has cranberries, you know?”

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Namibia’s data-driven approach to HIV has helped it become successful in tackling its spread.

A new study helping to improve how sustainability is measured for popular reef fish could help better assess the eco-friendly seafood options at the dinner table.

New accelerator-based technology being developed by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University aims to reduce the side effects of cancer radiation therapy by shrinking its duration from minutes to under a second. Built into future compact medical devices, technology developed for high-energy physics could also help make radiation therapy more accessible around the world.

A study recently published in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature journal, has shown how using cultured cells from patients with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, to investigate abnormalities in nerve connections in the brain could lead to new treatments. Strong correlations were observed between the findings in the cells in culture — grown outside the body in a controlled environment — and findings from brain imaging performed on the very same human participants.